Results tagged “dominickdunne”

Author and journalist Dominick Dunne, who died yesterday at age 83, wrote about high-profile crime for Vanity Fair. His interest in the topic—and sympathy for victims—stemmed from his 22-year-old daughter's murder in Los Angeles; her killer, her boyfriend, served less than 3 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter. The NY Times explains that Dunne often said, "I’m sick of being asked to weep for killers. We’ve lost our sense of outrage," and current VF editor Graydon Carter said, "He never pretended to be objective in covering trials. He was always writing from the point of view of the victim because of what happened to his daughter, and he had a riveting way of knowing, almost like Balzac, what to tell the reader when." Carter also described Dunne as "equal parts Walter Winchell, Louella Parsons and Yosemite Sam. He had equal standings in the worlds of society, crime, and journalism, and he fit in well in all three" to the Post. Here's Dunne's VF article, "Justice," covering his daughter's killer's trial.

Author and journalist Dominick Dunne, who wrote covered high society crime trials and wrote novels about high society crime, died at age 83 in Manhattan. His son Griffin Dunne said the cause was bladder cancer. Dunne was a special correspondent for Vanity Fair, which notes he "famously covered the trials of O. J. Simpson, the Menendez brothers, Michael Skakel, William Kennedy Smith, and Phil Spector, as well as the impeachment of President Bill Clinton... His first article for the magazine appeared in March 1984—an account of the trial of the man who murdered his daughter Dominique. Throughout his life, Dunne was a vocal advocate for victims’ rights." Vanity Fair has an archive of Dunne's articles and profiles; for instance, writing about meeting Claus von Bulow, Dunne observes, "On that May Sunday of the seventh week of his second trial, the Danish society figure was dressed in tight blue jeans and a black leather jacket."

Exactly 13 years to the day he was acquitted for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ronald Goldman, OJ Simpson was found guilty of all 12 counts stemming from a robbery in a Las Vegas hotel last year. The 12 counts included kidnapping, armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon and should land Simpson in prison for somewhere from 15 years to life. While the proceedings in Las Vegas have certainly been under the radar in comparison to The Trial of the Century, no Simpson trial would be complete without a little bit of theatrics. In between readings of the verdicts, the lights in the court mysteriously went out and as Simpson was finally being led away, his sister fainted inside the courtroom. Aside from Simpson, the only familiar holdover from 1995's verdict was Dominick Dunne, the writer who covered the former trial for Vanity Fair, who in failing health recently told the New York Times that this "would be a fitting way to end."

Gothamist on Ming the tiger, city turkeys, uptown monkeys, the Man Zoo, and the 350-pound turtle wandering Central Park.

Of course, Gothamist knows and loves Krucoff because he brought us an idea that was ignored by Gawker. And in our research on Krucoff, we stumbled upon a bizarre Krucoff Vs. [Lockhart] Steele blog that's interesting to about ten people, but what people they must be!

Roger Friedman who writes a sort of gossip column at Fox News's website has always struck me as the music and entertainment industries' Dominick Dunne: incredibly well-connected, smart, hysterical, self-important, and above all, totally biased. He's great for the music industry's insider perspective - he was on the pulse of the Alicia Keys publicity machine, as well as was a willing messenger for it. But I can't take his tastes seriously - especially when he thinks that Chicago is the best movie of the year. He also thinks the About Schmidt screenplay was better than About a Boy, but maybe that's because he's old. (Yeah, I'm being ageist, but About Schmidt is a huge boring downer and Jack is basically doing his usual schtick. Who cares?)